Chapter 1 (pages 5-32) Summary

In this section an unnamed 32-year-old American graduate student begins her narrative describing the political, social, and racial climate of 1980's Botswana. She is preparing to travel to the capital city of Gaborone for a respite after spending 18 months in the African bush working on a thesis in nutritional anthropology. Studying the effect of seasonal nutritional availability and its effect on fertility has proven to be unrewarding. Even in the remotest areas the hunter/gatherer societies she intended to study are becoming increasing difficult to find. Modern foodstuffs have somehow penetrated even the most remote areas so she finds far more people eating canned goods and cornflakes than expected and very few subsisting on their traditional diets. After a year and a half she is exhausted and worried about the cessation of her menstrual periods due to physical stress...